Minimum pricing for alcohol

It's both, I suppose, but as someone who only ever drinks moderately and who thinks the cost of alcohol in this country is already ridiculous, thanks to all the duty slapped on by the chancellor, I resent the idea that I'll have to pay more for my modest intake just because others can't control themselves. The rebel in me is getting pretty fed up with being told what I can and can't do too, as a tax-paying, consenting, adult.

I also question whether it will have much, if any, impact. After all, if you're an alcoholic, is a modest price increase really going to make you stop drinking?

I don't drink and never have - don't like the stuff. But I don't support the proposal to raise the price of alcohol. The kiddy guzzlers all have enough to throw away £50 a night on booze as it is, and it will make no difference. The alcoholics will do it anyway. Those who like a glass of wine with their meal and can (shock horror) drink the £3 a bottle which is the cheapest you can now get, will be the ones who will notice.

too much booze leaves you vomiting in the gutter and with a memory loss due to brain damage. Yet the kids still keep doing it. You can't legislate to improve intelligence or understanding of cause and effect. Getting this drunk needs to be seen as disgusting, not fun

It is a perfect example of utilitarianism, the greater good for the greater number and with all public health campaigns it will not suit or please everybody. Yes it will put money out of peoples pockets and into the pot , but if you look at the evidence alcohol related illness or injury costs the NHS more

It will still have an effect though, on 'occasional drinkers'. And when the 50p per unit doesn't miraculously stop people buying cheap alcohol, what will happen? The temperance movement and the bullying public health officials and the nanny staters and all the people who like to sneer at the dreadful poor working classes for drinking too much will all get together and say "Oh, 50p a unit isn't enough, let's raise it to 60p. How about 75p? Why not £1 a unit?"

This is one of the problems with a state-funded healthcare system. If the state provides all the healthcare, then suddenly your body isn't your own, because if you're ill through your own actions you cost the taxpayer money. So the state has an interest in your health, and under a government with a statist or totalitarian bent (such as Labour 1997-2010) that 'interest' becomes a compulsion to intervene and interfere.

As an aside, I wonder if any consideration has been put towards people who like to make their own infusions, such as sloe gin. When I make infusions I tend to buy the cheapest vodka or gin or whatever. Suddenly, it's going to have its price put up. I recognise that there aren't many people who do what I do, and I also recognise that there's no real interest in the actual effects this policy is going to have because its true bent is ideological rather than health-based.

I'm at student nurse and spent some time with the public health officer that is in charge on this campaign in our area .From what I understand this won't have a big affect on occasional drinkers and that only the cheap alcohol that causes the most damage will go up in price , when I am on the pc I will link the information he used to explain it to me .I was of the same opinion of others before I had it all explained to me

Yes. Have you heard of Alcohol Concern? I linked to them earlier. Alcohol Concern is the Temperance Movement rebranded. It receives most of its funding from the Department of Health. What we have here is a political lobby group, who are using charitable status to give themselves a veneer of respectability, and who are being funded entirely through government grants. The grants go to this political lobby group, which then produces 'research' to back up or generate government policy in a particular field.

It's been happening for the last decade or so and there are a huge range of fake charities which create government policy.

Actually those figure came from a department of health leaflet I picked up at the dentist. I will try to find it..

Please do. And if you can find out what the source was of their figures, then all the better, because unsourced figures have little value.

Mead which was drunk in the middle ages was 1-2% hardly special brew

So you do admit, then, that alcohol was not 'in short supply' which was the claim you made earlier? Ordinary people would have drunk beer (at varying strengths) rather than mead, btw.

Don't the toffs have cellars stocked full of wine? Well why can't we store 3 packs for the price of 2? Why do they want us to pay more? We are already paying for the bankers' bonuses and the NHS Trust bosses salaries and the MPs' bath plugs, why do we have to pay even more? I really don't mind paying a few quid extra for luxuries in life - alcohol is not an essential after all but an added extra for those who've earned it! If I didn't work and money was tight, I certainly wouldn't EXPECT alcohol to be cheap in order for me to function. What an effing liberty! Bankers are over paid, agreed. I'm not sure about NHS bosses or MPs bath plugs but maybe these were once news stories which I missed. I do know that if a person has desire enough to have a decent quality of life, regardless of their background, they do not need cheap alcohol to do so. The uplifted price will hopefully deter people from mindlessly drinking and hopefully encourage them to spend their hard earned cash more wisely - on their families, their health/wellbeing, fun activities, healthy foods, etc etc whether they be toffs, mcp's, wcp's, homeless or bums. Whatever small amount is left could be put towards an alcoholic drink or two - cheap booze shouldn't be at the forefront of your life agenda - EVER!!

And why is this happening, why do so many of them work for charities and trusts when they are kicked out of office by the people? Because they are divorced from the people. They get taxis and expenses and have often never had a real job, so they don't know how real people live, and that is why they think we are irresponsible and children to their nanny state.

One in seven MPs have never had a proper job, according to research.And in addition to those who have absolutely no experience of working in the real world, many more have served only brief stints as lobbyists or public relations advisers before entering politics full-time.

The trend is led by Labour, which has twice as many MPs who have never worked outside politics as either the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats.

The study also reveals that working class MPs, who played a key role in the politics of the last century, have become an endangered species.

I never realised that, but that is what it is. They are pretending they care, they pay our money to put cartoons on television to show us how concerned they are for our health, and meanwhile people die in hospitals of dehydration, figures on mortality are fiddled, NHS trust managers earn 6 figure salaries and very few of them are ever sacked when scandals are finally revealed.

No one is ever responsible. But us, the people, are irresponsible with our drinking, so they will make us pay more while telling us they only do it because they care.

They donate less than 5% of what they pull in towards research into childhood cancers that are killing children left and right. I will never donate a penny to them in my life for peddling outright lies.

'My understanding is that too much alcohol is bad for you. My personal experience is that heavy drinking destroys lives. Do I support an initiative to increase awareness and discourage heavy drinking ?'

And you honestly believe that complete line of utter spin that that is what this is about? PMSL! It's about more money in their coffers, and at the expense of even more small businesses, as if times aren't enough, when their trade is hit by this.

'Well cancer research are a bunch of communists who want to destroy ordinary people's lives everyone knows that.'

Oh, no, I think they are an organisation who really need to rename themselves what they really are: Breast Cancer Research UK, because that is where most of the money their pull in goes to, and who produce misleading advertisements like the one that states that nowawaday, 8 out of 10 children with leukaemia survive. BULLSHIT! There are 2 types of leukaemia, you have the misfortune of developing the non-childhood one, your odds are more like 5 out of 10. At best.

They are spending money on cartoons and paying actors to make adverts to teach adults to drink coffe or teas instread of alcohol, and at the same time people are being told that they will lose their disability benefits in order to save money.

It is disgraceful. There is a boom for the advertising industry, the actors with the chirpy voices and the NHS executives who run these schemes, while ordinary people are suffering like they never have before.

What is it with supermarkets and government. They seem to be in partnership.

We have workfare where the unemployed stack supermarket shelves, we have partnerships and promotion of food to buy, and now we have minimum alcohol prices that it seems won't even benefit the taxpayer, but will go to supermarkets. And all this in a time when ordinary people are facing the toughest times we have ever seen.

Claig I am realy struggling to keep up with all your prejudices and agendas. My understanding is that too much alcohol is bad for you. My personal experience is that heavy drinking destroys lives. Do I support an initiative to increase awareness and discourage heavy drinking ? yes. What this has to do with MPs expenses or thalidomide victims is beyond me.

With the amount of public money that is wasted in the biggest financial crisis since the 1930s, no wonder New Labour's Liam Byrne left a note saying something like "there's no money left".

Instead of wasting taxpayer money on chirpy cartoons to teach adults to eat five-a-day and instead of paying advertisers to create them and celebs to make voiceovers for them, start creating real employment and stop hassling thalidomide victims in wheelchairs who are facing major spinal surgey by stopping their benefits and saying they are fit for work.

Insulting is not nearly strong enough for the waste of public funds involved.

Russia has higher per capita alcohol consumption than us and lower cancer mortality rates.China has lower per capita alcohol consumption than us and higher cancer mortality rates.

Don't believe all of the figures used by health campaigners.

We have seen that the NHS did not give accurate mortality figures in some hospital trusts. We have seen thousands of people dying unnecessarily due to poor treatemnt and wehave heard Hunt say that if figures on mortality are figured that health bosses could face jail.

Don't believe every figure used in marketing campaigns.

I looked up Change4Life and its websote strikes me as infantlising adults with its bright cartoon characters and simple slogans which only give teh usual avoid fat, sugar and salt type messages but don't mention aspartame.

I wondered who runs it and who set it ip and what it costs, and it seems that it cost in the region of £250 million over 3 years and it looks like that is public taxpayer money.

Who set it up? - the New Labour progressives - no surprise there.

Lots of the money is spent on advertising and supermarkets and Pepsi are partners and celebs seem to do advertising too. Lots of public money going to private companies.

Fortunately the Coalition has cut some of these costs in order to save public money that the progressives had signed off.

This is from the Guardian

Little benefit to consumersThe three-year £250m Change4Life initiative was launched by Labour in 2009, but has been mired in controversy Last year the coalition government said it was axing its £75m advertising budget and would invite the food and drink industry  including major players such as Kellogg's and Nestlé  to help promote it.

Christine Haigh of the Children's Food Campaign said the scheme was insulting to consumers. "This analysis exposes the 'Great Swapathon' for what it really is  a great marketing opportunity for the companies involved but of little benefit to consumers pockets or health

Diane Abbott has also called the Coalition's advertising spend on some of these adverts insulting and I agree with her.

These type of adverts treat us as children and nanny state uses cartoon like characters and chirpy, cheery voices to teach us children what to do, and we pay for it out of our taxes, and doubtless some people are earning large salaries running it. But it is progressive.

This is what Diane said

This £2million that Tory Ministers are spending is an insult to hard-pressed British families, when record numbers of people are relying on food banks, and the governments own policies to tackle obesity are proving to be a disaster,' she said.

We need more than half-baked corporate responsibility deal schemes, because the government has a growing crisis on its hands.

'So its not right that the government is blowing money on advertising annual supermarkets discounts, and glossing over the serious problems British families are being pushed towards.

I wonder in part whether some of these initiatives are to try to convince us that the progressives care about us while people were dying on hospital wards, drinking from vases and lying in their faeces and targets were set.